Time was Away: Masculinity, Sexuality and Travel in late British Neo-Romantic Art, Illustration and Design 1940- 55

大卫·艾伦·梅勒(David Alan Mellor)的《失乐园》(A Paradise Lost，1987)和马尔科姆·约克(Malcolm York ke，1988)的《地方的精神》(The spirity of Place，1988)将新浪漫主义艺术家描述为战时的民族主义和个人主义的追求，在战后逐渐淡出。随着对英国艺术的研究变得更加成熟，并开始接受酷儿研究和后殖民方法论，是时候重新评估了。近年来，亚历山德拉·哈里斯追溯了浪漫主义在整个现代主义中的影响(2010年)，西蒙·福克纳从非殖民主义的角度研究了约翰·明顿的牙买加场景(2006年)，西蒙·马丁首次在明顿的作品中探索性(2017)。参与这场运动的许多艺术家都是同性恋，但性问题并不是学术研究的重点；这个项目将对此进行质询。与此同时，到目前为止，学者们还没有特别关注第二代新浪漫主义艺术家，他们的职业生涯始于一个封闭的博物馆和画廊世界，并转向了另类生产手段，包括文学出版，例如约翰·莱曼的出版社、企鹅新写作和地平线杂志。我将第一次探索这些跨学科的网络是如何成为同性恋社区表达的生产性空间的。1945年后，当这些同性恋艺术家在国外寻找逃避的空间时，他们发现自己陷入了国家和殖民力量的纠缠。贾斯比尔·普阿关于同性恋的著作表明，同性恋运动和同性恋身份是如何在近几十年来与西方民族主义和新殖民主义共谋的，而希拉姆·佩雷斯的作品已经开始将同性恋追溯到19世纪，从而使其历史性。然而，没有学者考虑过这两个时刻之间发生的变化：没有人问过，在战后的时刻，酷儿是如何与英国民族及其帝国的焦虑纠缠在一起的，以及它的外部，例如，在1951年的不列颠音乐节上，一些人认为这是新浪漫主义的最后一次展示。这个项目将着眼于英国性和民族认同感历史上的一个过渡时刻。我将把这些理论框架应用于传统艺术媒体内外的主要来源，包括书籍插图、戏剧设计和文学。我的研究将表明，在一个研究不足的时期，战后艺术可能会如何结合背景，以强有力的新方式展示，更准确地反映出在全球政治不断变化的情况下，合作和共同创造的模式。

David Alan Mellor's 'A Paradise Lost' (1987) and Malcolm Yorke's 'The Spirit of Place' (1988) characterise Neo-Romantic artists as being on a nationalistic and individualistic quest for a 'paradisiac Britain' in the wartime years, which gradually petered out post-war.As the study of British Art has become more established and has begun to embrace queer studies and postcolonial methodologies, it is time for a reassessment. In recent years Alexandra Harris has traced the influence of Romanticism throughout Modernism (2010), Simon Faulkner has investigated John Minton's scenes of Jamaica in terms of decolonisation (2006), and Simon Martin has explored sexuality in Minton's work for the first time (2017). Many of the artists involved in the movement were queer, but sexuality has not been a focus for scholarship; this project will interrogate this. At the same time, until now, scholars have not specifically focused on second generation Neo-Romantic artists, who began their careers in a world of closed museums and galleries and turned to alternative means of production including literary publishing, for example John Lehmann's publishing house, Penguin New Writing and Horizon magazine. I will explore for the first time how these interdisciplinary networks were productive spaces for the expression of queer communities.In looking abroad for a space of escape after 1945, these queer artists found themselves entangled in national and colonial forces. Jasbir Puar's work on homonationalism has shown how the queer movement and queer identities have been complicit with western nationalisms and neo-colonialism in recent decades, and Hiram Perez's work has begun to historicise homonationalism by tracing its roots back to the nineteenth century. However, no scholarship has considered the shifts that occur between these two moments: no-one has asked how queerness was both entangled with, and outside of, the British nation and its imperial anxieties in the post-war moment, which were present, for example, at the 1951 Festival of Britain, seen by some as the last showcase for Neo-Romanticism. This project will home in on a transitional moment in the history of sexuality and national identity in Britain.I will apply these theoretical frameworks to primary sources which fall both inside and outside of traditional art media, embracing book illustration, theatre design, and literature. My research will suggest how post-war art might be contextualised and exhibited in powerful new ways, more accurately reflecting patterns of collaboration and shared creative endeavour amid shifting global politics in an under-researched period.